She Remembers
by chekcough
Summary: Mulder and Scully travel to the west coast for a case, and Scully finds herself confronted with her past. Cancer arc. MSR (sort of).


She Remembers

California summers are dry and hot, with very little wind. Forest fires thrive like ivy ravages walls, and drought conditions force restaurants to sell bottled water to customers. It's July, and Mulder estimates that it must be at least a hundred degrees, probably more. He stands in the relative shade of a spindly looking tree, sweat dripping down his back, and watches Scully speaking with one of their witnesses, who's lead them to her winding back garden, filled with low desert bushes and yellow flowers.

She's a cactus, comfortable in the unbearable Indian summer, grasping to life with all her might even as nature aggressively fights her. Scully looks over at him with squinted eyes and apologizes to the older woman.

"I'm sorry, my partner's getting heat stroke," she says, or something resembling it. Scully closes her notepad and nods at the witness. "Thank you so much for your time."

As Scully walks away the wrinkled, tanned woman calls. "Be careful, it was up to 'hundred and seventeen up in Death Valley yesterday!"

"Come on, Mulder," Scully says, as if she's calling a dog she's left tied to a parking meter. She tucks her notepad into the pocket of her trousers and heads to the car.

"You okay?"

Mulder nods. "I think I'm dehydrated," he says as she starts the car. They'd left their windows rolled down but it's still hot as hell in the dark blue rental and, with no air to circulate around them, Mulder feels like he's sitting in a hot tub. "Can you turn the air on?"

Scully shoots him a withering look. "There's a bottle of water by your foot, I think." She pulls out of the driveway and dust kicks up from the ground, swirling around them as she drives up the winding road and back to the highway.

Mulder messes with the air conditioning, rolling up his window and turning it on high. Scully keeps her window down, enjoying the rip of hot air blowing on the left side of her face, dry and harsh. Eventually, after her cheek begins to burn with sand, she rolls up with window and the car fills with the ice chill of artificial cold. "Take off your jacket, Mulder," she says, shivering, turning the vents toward Mulder. "Black attracts heat. You probably already have sunstroke."

He shrugs out of it, picks up the hot bottle of water from the carpeted floor of the car and twists the cap open. "What did she say?"

Scully longs to turn the air off and roll the window back down as they reach the highway. Her family used to drive like that when she was a little girl, and ever since the onset of the cancer she hasn't been able to get truly warm. "A lot of nothing. She doesn't remember anything from Sophie's abduction, just like the other parents."

"Why did Sophie live with her grandmother?" Mulder asks, now turning the cool air down as his sweat chills him. "What happened to her parents?"

Scully moves into the left lane as their exit looms ahead, the cold giving her a searing headache. "Mother died from severe hemorrhaging a few days after Sophie was born, and the dad wasn't interested in her. She'd been living with her maternal grandmother since she was born."

"Do you think that the father might have had a motive to get his daughter back? Are we looking at just a kidnapping case here?"

Scully shakes her head. "No, I'm pretty sure he has no interest in her. Mrs. Foster said that he hasn't seen Sophie since she was two years old. And he lives in Colorado now, anyway." She rolls her head from side to side, trying to stave off the headache. Her skin is pink around her hairline and on her neck, and Mulder knows tomorrow she'll have a sunburn.

"Do you feel better now?" Scully asks, eyes firmly on the road, turning off onto their exit and back to the F.B.I. field office.

He nods. "Yeah, I'll be fine."

* * *

They're investigating abductions. _Again_, Scully thinks as they leave the field office after consulting with the detectives assigned to the case. They're a male and female partnership, just like Mulder and Scully, and she finds this refreshing. Three abductions, seemingly random, along the border of California and Arizona. She has an autopsy to perform tomorrow.

She loves this part of the country. The unforgiving summer sun, strange dry bushes with wild yellow flowers, dust settling in her pores. California, Arizona, Nevada, they're all somewhat wild and untamed. Unkempt. She stares at the yucca plants growing outside her motel room window as she unlocks her door, marveling at the brave way the sword leaves spike out and the ugly bloom of it, reminiscent of a dandelion, swaying without rhythm in an imperceptible breeze.

It's only late afternoon. Recently, Scully doesn't like resting in one place for too long. She hears time loudly in her ears, and the prospect of lying in a motel room for the rest of the day makes her anxious. She unlocks the door and goes inside, rifling for her suitcase for the appropriate clothes, and changes into a loose cotton tunic shirt and a lighter pair of pants. In the bathroom Scully wrinkles her nose at the pink flush on her cheeks and hairline and pulls her hair back into something resembling a French twist.

In the room next to her, Mulder turns on the shower and she hears the sound of the spray change as he steps inside. Good. She'll leave and come back in time for him to have dinner, maybe even bring something back for him. Scully considers leaving a note, then decides against it. She doesn't owe him any explanation. He ditches her all the time. And this isn't really a ditch, Scully rationalizes. He's in the shower, then he'll take a nap and fall asleep, get up by the time she's back and stay up half the night, restless. She leaves her room, locks the door, and climbs back into their rental car, rolling down her window and pulling out of the motel lot, heading back onto the highway.

* * *

She's alone in the dust. Even though it's tourist season, the killing sun and scorching temperatures leave the National Park relatively empty. On a clear patch of red sand, desert bushes and grasses whispering against each other in a true breeze, now, Scully sits and breathes in the burning world.

Before her, stretching for miles, majestic and unfathomable, the canyon stands proudly in red stone. She's seen it twice before, but this part of the Earth, with its drops and jutting stone, weathered by time and heat, will never cease to humble her. It's unsettling that such a dead, broken part of the world makes her feel whole and alive. Scully closes her eyes.

She remembers.

California summers leaving her face freckled and her shoulders burned. Squealing in delight as she jumped through the sprinkler with Melissa and Charlie while Bill decided he was too old to play games. Lizards toasting under a clear sky, slithering away under the terra cotta pots with succulents growing out of them that her mother used to keep on the front steps of their Navy regulated house. Popsicles turning her tongue blue and dripping down her chin. Scully opens her eyes.

The sun is setting, and its beauty is loud and bright, like bleeding paint. It's getting late, and she has to drive an hour to get back to the motel. As she gets into the car and turns the key in the ignition, ruining the whistled quiet of her roadside perch, Scully's phone rings.

"Scully."

Mulder breathes a sigh of relief. "Scully. Where are you?"

"I'll be back soon, Mulder. I just went to buy some things," Scully explains, a low pang in her abdomen reminding her that it's dinner time. "Do you want me to bring back something to eat?"

* * *

When she arrives back at the motel with an authentic Italian pizza, the cicadas are singing. Mulder opens his door before she can knock, and the expression on his face is carefully contained relief. Scully feels his eyes on her as she moves into his room and sets the pizza on the small table beside the ice box and coffee pot.

"Pepperoni and green peppers okay?" she asks, busying herself with paper plates. She eats her pizza with utensils, which Mulder's always teased her about.

"Sounds good." He helps himself to a piece and sits down on one of the beds while Scully takes a chair by the window. He's lost a certain spark with her ever since her diagnosis, and looks at her these days with a wash of desperation in his eyes. Scully is beginning to grow tired of it, of how careful he is with her, how tentative and shy around any topic involving death. She saw him flinch when Lara Foster mentioned Death Valley.

"So, what did you need to go buy?" Mulder asks as Scully works her way through her dinner, noticing for the first time her entirely different attire.

Scully looks confused. "Oh," she says after a beat.

"Toothpaste. Toothpaste and...deodorant." Her answer is lame and too simple for a nearly four hour absence. She closes off, and he doesn't press her for details. After Scully finishes a piece of pizza, she yawns, complains that it's too cold in his room, and says goodnight. He watches her shut the door behind her, trying to not remember the terror that had struck him when she wouldn't answer her door two hours earlier.

He'd gotten out of the shower and dressed in clean clothes, knocked on her door to see if she wanted to go sightseeing while the day was still young. She hadn't answered, and rather than thinking she was simply asleep or in the shower, Mulder had immediately been drenched in frightened worry. Every time she's out of his sight, he has an irrational fear that she's left him forever. And he can't bear the thought of it, even for ten minutes. Sometimes, he'd like to wrap her up in his arms and curl around her in one of these beds, hold her and bury his face in the fragrant fire of her hair, keep her so close that nothing could tear her away from him. Now, he's afraid to even touch her, afraid that if he even brushed her back with his hand he'd want to tear her into his arms.

That night, Scully closes her eyes. And she remembers.

She remembers the Pacific, and how she's always preferred it to the colder, darker water near what she now calls home. Sand burn along her thigh from too much roughhousing near the surf. A throat scratched with saltwater after an angry bout with the waves. The ocean in winter. The morning dolphins and gull calls, their elated squaking when she and Melissa threw stale breadcrumbs up into the air. Scully opens her eyes.

She sets her alarm for seven, turns up the heat, and falls asleep.

* * *

One of the recovered victims, Stephen Arnold, lies face up, nude, in front of Scully. She likes autopsying in the morning. She's awake, focussed, ready to go. She starts the tape recorder, and begins.

It's a standard, textbook autopsy, the only anomaly being a benign tumor on the fifty year-old man's liver. Scully is just finishing sewing him back up when her nosebleed starts. Behind her, Scully hears Mulder, along with Detectives Sarah Frayser and Oliver Miller, walking down the hall, about to enter into the room. Afraid of contaminating the body, and surprised at the gush of blood down over her lip and chin, like that blue popsicle, Scully tears off her body-stained gloves, putting her nose to the back of her hand and wiping.

"Hey, Scully," Mulder says, opening the swing door. "How'd it go?"

She worries over her nose again, then turns to face them. "Uh, inconclusive. I didn't see anything that would give clues to a murder."

She sees Mulder's eyes widen. "I'd like to go clean up," Scully says, not waiting for an answer as she hurries out the other side and into the small changing room. Her head is suddenly on fire, the chemo catching up with her, and she vomits into the toilet. Mulder can hear her retching from two rooms over.

"Is she okay?" Detective Frayser asks. She has grey-purple eyes, and the concern in them touches Mulder.

"Yeah, she'll be fine."

They go over the results, reading over Scully's meticulous, legible notes, and conclude with her that nothing explains the death of Stephen Arnold as anything other than natural.

Mulder hears Scully groan and retch again, then her voice, scratchy. "Mulder?"

He turns back to the detectives. "I'm sorry, I'll be right back."

She looks like a horror movie.

Blood streams from her nose, down her face, and there are swipes of it where she's attempted to wipe her hands on her scrub top. Her eyes are bloodshot and streaming from throwing up, and vomit is on her neck, down her scrubs, and in her hair.

"Scully," Mulder whispers. "What happened?"

She shakes her head, cheeks white from loss of blood. "It's the chemo. I went for treatment the day before we left DC. I guess it just caught up with me."

Mulder moves to the sink, grabbing paper towels and dampening them, holding one arm to steady her as he mops at her mouth and neck. "Has the nosebleed stopped?" he asks, noting her white knuckled hand still pinching her nose.

Scully nods, and her eyes roll with the movement. "Stay with me, Scully," Mulder says softly, his own voice trembling. "Let's clean you up. You wanna go to the hospital?"

"No!"

He inhales in annoyance. "No," he repeats. Lifting her arms, Mulder pulls the soiled shirt up and over her head, keeping one hand on her and getting another pile of paper towels to mop up the foul mess on her shoulder and chest. Scully groans, mortified.

"It's okay," he soothes. Behind him, Detective Miller opens the door and his partner comes in. They see the two F.B.I agents -Mulder holding up his wilting partner, wiping at her pale skin with a bunched up ball of towels. With Scully leaning back as she is, her sternum and rib cage press against the skin of her chest.

"Is there anything I can do?" Detective Frayser asks.

Mulder looks over his shoulder at her, but Scully nods. "My suit is in that locker over there. Could you get it for me, please?" She steps out of Mulder's arms and sinks heavily onto the closed lid of the toilet. Reaching out, she grabs a few of his fingers, squeezes them. This, it seems, is the signal that his work here is done. Mulder nods at her, steps back and away, and goes with Detective Miller to wait for their partners in the sweltering morning.

Scully emerges from the morgue looking just like her normal self, save the pink blush at her ears and burn down her part, and a little lack of blood in her cheeks.

"Okay, let's go, Mulder. I need to share my findings with the local PD." He looks at her for a moment, watches her exhale slowly. "Stop it, I'm fine."

He sets the car in reverse, pulls out of the parking space. They drive in silence until Mulder switches the radio on. According to whatever local station this is, it's one hundred and six degrees outside. There's no appealing view now. Just the bleak, once-bright dust chafed sprawl of gas stations and dollar stores, all waving in the heat under a cloudless, colorless sky.

* * *

They go for dinner at a small Mexican restaurant just a few miles away from the motel. Scully wants to eat outside, so they're seated at a little table behind the restaurant with a few other couples and families. A string of chili pepper lights goes around the little patio, and small candles light each table, the wax already liquid with the wick burning steadily until it drowns.

It feels vaguely like a date, Mulder muses, even if he hasn't been on one since his early days at the Bureau. Scully is softer in this half-light, her hair a dark brown and her cheeks rosy. Around them, the cicadas drone.

Scully orders a burrito and Mulder opts for fajitas, and then they cut their portions in half and share with each other. She seems so relaxed like this, Mulder realizes. He'd never imagined that she would be at home in what basically amounted to the desert. This is a whole new Scully.

"Mulder, you're staring."

He rips his eyes away from the general vicinity of her ear. "Sorry, I was just thinking."

"About what? The profile?" She's slowing down on her meal, taking sips of water and leaning back in her metal chair which grates at her body body.

He shakes his head. "No, about you. About your childhood." Scully raises an eyebrow. "You grew up in California, right?"

"San Diego. Dad was stationed there for maybe six or seven years. Why?"

He fiddles with a piece of her burrito. "I don't know, I guess I never thought of you as a California girl before."

Scully smiles in amusement. "What's a California girl?"

Mulder laughs, embarrassed. "Never mind that. I just mean...you seem to really like it here. I'm miserable all day and you seem to just bask in this weather. Like you're really at home here."

Scully concedes, tilting her head. "I am. I liked living here. I'm glad I have the chance to come back before…"

"Scully…"

They're quiet for the rest of the meal. As the sun sets the world cools, until Mulder actually feels cold and Scully is shivering in her seat. They pay for their meal and head back to the car. A night wind picks up, and blows Scully's hair over her face. It smells smoky and cunning, like the jackal, and she looks out before she opens her car door, out into the wildness of the off-road badlands behind the restaurant. Shadows of tall cacti and scraggly bushes are all she can see. She waits for something, maybe the hoot of a coyote. When nothing changes, Scully opens her door and slides into the car, where Mulder has been steadily studying her for the past few moments.

* * *

In bed, Scully closes her eyes.

She remembers.

She remembers a rainy night in Oregon. This tall, lanky young F.B.I agent that had tilted her on a strange axis and spun her around, changing her view forever. She is still spinning. She remembers the trust she felt for him, almost immediately, even if her motive was to debunk him. She had been a smug know-it-all and he had been a bitter, territorial asshole. Somehow along the line, it had all worked out. She remembers an embrace from their first year together, when she had been less guarded and more easily spooked. How she wishes it could be like that now. She yearns for his arms, but shies from them every time he seems ready to open them. Why? They've always been strange, that way. Scully opens her eyes.

She hears the fuzzy murmur of the TV in the neighboring room, the hum of the heater, and the beating of her own heart too loud inside her head. She takes a deep breath, exhales, and goes to sleep.

* * *

The blast of air conditioning that assaults them upon entering the public library is so unexpected that Scully gasps audibly, instantly freezing. This new adjustment to temperature is something she's still getting used to, and suddenly she wishes Mulder hadn't left his jacket in the back seat of the car. She'd like to have it with her now.

"I just want to see if they have the original records for that abduction case from 1987," Mulder says quietly as they approach the reference desk and get pointed in the correct direction for the government information aisles. While he thumbs through manila folders and laminated sheets, Scully leans against a bookshelf, the cold eating its way into her head. She feels a migraine chugging toward her, faster with each passing minute. They come more often, now. Once a week. They throb between her eyes.

Another minute, and it's too much. "Mulder, I'll be outside, okay?"

He looks over at her, takes in her clammy appearance and pained eyes. "Yeah, sure. How are you feeling?"

Scully smiles tiredly. "I'm fine. It's just too cold here. I'm getting a headache."

She leaves to go back to the car, and Mulder sorts through files for another ten minutes. His worry for his partner overshadows the attention he should be giving to this case, and he rushes through his research, potentially overlooking the files, before he sets them aside and sets off after her.

When he spots her, it's not in the car. She's sitting on the library steps, elbows on her knees as she chats with a young boy who's taken up a spot next to her. He has four or five small books clasped in his arms, and his mother seems to be speaking on the phone and rocking a baby back and forth in her stroller. Mulder watches them, Scully listening to the little boy and responding as if he's just as old as she is.

"How old are you, Zach?" she asks. The kid holds up four fingers and two thumbs. "Six! Wow, I thought you looked older than that!"

Zach shows off his books to Scully until his mother notices where he's gone off to and calls him back, apologizing to Scully. Mulder watches the family go, then joins Scully. She stands and looks up at him.

"Cute kid," Mulder notes.

"Yeah."

He studies her for a beat. "Do you want to get ice cream?"

Scully looks up again, a surprised smile across her face. It isn't really an answer, but they're in the center of town already, and Mulder had spotted what looked like a 1950s style ice cream shop a few blocks back. He walks toward it, and Scully follows.

"Do you want children, Mulder?" Scully asks, sweeping her tongue around the rim of the cake cone as rainbow sherbet threatens to drip down over her fingers. It's a loaded question. She realizes this, and catches a glimpse of his shocked face before remedying it. "I mean, not _now, _necessarily. But in the future, maybe?"

Mulder has a spoonful of his sundae, watching her thoughtfully. It takes him a long time to come up with an answer. "I don't think so," he says at last, and watches as her eyes seem to dim slightly. "Do you?"

"Yes," Scully says, without hesitation. His heart splits in two, and she takes an open mouthed bite of her ice cream. "It's okay though, that I won't have any. I wouldn't want them to grow up without a mother."

"Scully, stop." He can't bear it when she brings up her inevitable end.

She gives him a sad smile. "Thanks for the ice cream."

* * *

The case has come to a standstill, and then to a close. With no new evidence, and no new leads, it's now time for them to head back to DC tomorrow. Mulder doesn't kid himself into thinking he'll miss this place. Scully, on the other hand, seems suddenly very quiet and contemplative, almost melancholy. It's two in the afternoon, and Mulder would like nothing more than to retreat into his ice box motel room and watch horrendous afternoon television.

"Can I take the car?" Scully asks as he puts it in park outside their motel rooms. He nods.

"Sure. Where are you going?"

"I just need to go somewhere before we leave," Scully says, going to the door to her room. She's squinting at him, and her eyes relax when Mulder steps in front of the sun.

"Is it somewhere I can go, too?"

Scully considers this. Normally, she would tell him that it's personal, that he can't come along. But he's her best friend, the person she trusts and loves more than anyone in the world, and she's dying. They can't waste any more time. "Yes. But you'll have to change clothes."

* * *

This time the temperature is more bearable, and there's even a small desert breeze. She stands, sternum reaching up to the sun, which is ripening as it readies itself to sink into the horizon, on the edge of a cliff. Her eyes are closed, and she's imagining.

Scully imagines soaring off this cliff like a rugged bird, cawing as it flaps over the rivulets, cracks and chasms of the canyons. She imagines being like the desert sand fox, running to and fro even in storms. She imagines herself the coyote. The slowly shifting shadow of the rock as time passes. She wants to be a part of this, nature's jagged wound, salted and unbandaged. She feels an affinity with its red and quiet pain, its lonely sorrow. She inhales deeply, filling herself up with this moment. Then she opens her eyes.

Mulder isn't looking at her, for once. He's staring at the sight in front of him, the rawest way the world has ever presented itself to him. He's immensely touched that she's brought him here, to a place that clearly means much more to her than he could have thought. When she moves from near the cliff's edge and starts to walk back to him, Mulder shades his eyes with his hand to look at her.

"Come with me," she says, taking his whole hand in hers.

She leads him to the quiet spot she'd claimed before, slightly shaded from the afternoon, among the yuccas and the oleander, to sit in the orange sand. He notices how she doesn't give a thought to the integrity of her clothes as she sits in the chalky red, and mimics her.

"It's haunting, isn't it?" she says, her voice almost reverent.

"Yes." And it is. Haunting in a beautiful way, like a love letter found among belongings years later, or how killing forest fires can be gorgeous.

In the light of the sinking sun to their left, Mulder becomes transfixed with the sudden sheerness of Scully's white cotton tunic. As it shivers in the unsteady wind Mulder can see the shadow of her breast, low and full.

"When I die, I want you to throw my ashes off this cliff."

Mulder doesn't dare breathe.

"I want to be here forever. I don't know if I believe in forever, but either way I'd want to be here."

"Why here?" he chokes.

She smiles to herself. "Because here it's so open. I feel so free. I've never in my life felt as free as I do standing a footstep away from falling into a canyon." She pauses, and Mulder is terrified when he sees a tear track its way down her cheek. "I've never allowed myself to feel free and be open. I think that's what I'll regret the most."

Just as he's about to touch her, Scully sniffs. "There's so many things I could have done differently, had I been more willing to take the leap."

"I think everyone feels that way."

"We could have been different," Scully says, still not looking at him. Her eyes are far away. "I used to be afraid, but I'm not, anymore."

He swallows. "Afraid of what?"

"Loving you."

The wind picks up, and the plants he doesn't know the name of brush their leaves together behind them, like a wind chime made of lantern paper. The sky is orange and yellow now, the sun is really setting, and Scully turns to look at him. Her blue eyes are dry and sad. Mulder is speechless.

"I never thought I'd be the one to say it first," she says, her voice almost lost in the warm air.

His heart pounds in his chest. "You knew?"

She nods, a wise old willow tree. "I knew."

This is a outcropping for doomed lovers, Mulder thinks. Chiseled and blurred all at once in the red sand and burning summer sun, they sit quietly, looking at each other, until Mulder's eyes burn with tears or sand and he has to break away.

Slowly, he begins his confession. "What I said before, Scully, about having children..."

Scully encourages him with her eyes. "The only children I could ever have, Scully….they could only have you as a mother. There's no one else. There'll never be anyone else."

It isn't saccharine or romantic, even with the sunset. It's immensely sad, and his admission destroys them both. Scully's eyes haze over and Mulder sits still as a statue as Scully melts over and into him, wrapping both arms around him and resting her cheek against his heart. "You didn't know that, did you?"

"No," she says thickly. "I didn't."

Mulder hitches her into his arms fully, kisses the crown of her head. Her sunburnt scalp and fire hair. "You're not going to die. Not after this."

Scully nods against his chest, but doesn't say anything. This is it, then. The immortal clinch. The broken reel of film that can only play one scene over and over. The shipwrecked sailor with no provisions. This is eternity. Here, on this spot carved from stone, him holding her, or her holding him. Cherishing heartbeats while the stilted wind brushes over them and the luring scent of the oleanders traps them there with its poison. Her half dead and him half alive.

Scully hears this, and is heartbreakingly sad. She tilts her head up, touching his chin with her lips to bring him down. He turns his face down to her, and they drink each other in with a hot, soft kiss. He's cradling her now, like a child with her head in the crook of his arm, her back supported with his other. She's supple and willing as he clasps her to him and kisses her lovingly. It's exhilarating, as any first kiss is, but comforting and natural all at once. They do not cry, but they want to.

At the motel, they both walk in Scully's door. The first thing Mulder notices is that it's hot and humid in her room, as if she'd never turned on the air conditioner. When he looks, he's horrified to find that the heat is on, and he switches it off. The humming stops, and when he looks up Scully is stepping out of her pants, out of her underwear. He hopes this won't be quick and dirty. He'd always planned on making love to her slowly.

He follows her lead, undressing quickly but not carelessly. He takes her in, wide-eyed, and she's more exquisite than even his dreams. Mulder thought she'd be smaller unclothed, but she seems both small and tall, frail and strong. She's lost weight, and Scully is evidently self conscious about that, shivering slightly and keeping her hand splayed over her ribs. She reaches out the other hand to him, leading him over to the cold bed, lying down and waiting for him with arms outstretched.

"Mulder," she whispers, when he finally joins her, instead laying beside her, brushing her nose with his.

He laughs raggedly. "Hi, Scully." He can feel her relax, and then watches her skin shiver as he runs his fingertips down her arm, barely touching the side of her breast.

They are careful. Mulder is ready the moment she touches him with her hand, but it takes Scully much longer. She wants him, but the disease that is ravaging her body leaves it with very little natural reaction. After a good amount of foreplay, she pulls Mulder close and guides him in, then gasps and shakes her head.

"No?" Mulder says, terror-stricken. "What's wrong?"

She gives him an anguished look. "I can't." His fingers hadn't helped, nor had his mouth's leisurely exploration of her breasts, although the answering jolt between her thighs had convinced Scully otherwise.

"It's fine," Mulder says, stroking her neck, his erection still pressing insistently on her thigh. "It's okay." He watches her bring her fingers down to stroke herself, then realizes the problem instantly. She stops her movements at the touch of his hand, then gazes down at him in fascination as he plants wet kisses on her abdomen, brushes her hand away, and gently pushes her legs apart, working her with his mouth.

He's inside her, and Scully doesn't ever want him to leave. Now they can't take any of it back. Mulder is saying wonderful words in her ear. Words like love. And, when he comes, he calls out her name, and God's. Again, it takes her longer. He waits, helping her along, sucking on her neck, kissing her breasts, until her voice rings out in a wordless cry.

It seems like the right time when, afterward, with Scully's cheek on his chest and one leg draped across him, Mulder tells her he loves her. At first he thinks she's crying, and then she raises her head and Mulder sees that it's the kind of laugh a lover gives, honest and pure. She's filled with joy, and kisses him hard. They've been so stupid.

* * *

They leave California changed irrevocably. She's tired, and doesn't refuse Mulder's help this time when he puts a strong arm around her and guides her to her seat on the plane. She gets airsick, and he runs a soothing hand over her shoulders. All this time, she's been hiding most of it from him, and she's too exhausted to keep it all tucked away anymore. He takes her home from the airport and doesn't ask to stay. Scully thanks him tiredly and falls into bed fully clothed.

Mulder goes home, welcoming the humid heat of DC and its modest eighty five degree July. He knew that they wouldn't go from friends to lovers instantly. He didn't anticipate them moving in together, couldn't fathom getting ready for work in the same apartment, like a married couple. That wasn't them.

Even so, he wishes she had asked him to stay. Because now he can hold her, and he wants to.

Mulder wakes up at four in the morning, stares at the ceiling for a moment and hears the tick of the clock, then turns over. Moments later, he hears the swish of someone pulling the covers back, and feels her instantly familiar little body crawl in next to him. When they wake up with the sunrise, jetlagged, he's curled around her and she's breathing steadily, her heartbeat strong when he puts his palm over her left breast.

When he kisses her hair, he thinks he smells it on her, still. The dusty canyon wind, the heat, the salt. She smells like California. She's his scorching summer and gorgeous forest fire, his cactus warrior and desert flower. And he thinks maybe, just maybe, she won't get to visit the canyons in ash after all.

* * *

**A/N: Hey friends! I hope you enjoyed this! I really liked writing it. There's a lot about geography that I think makes a person who they are, and I wanted to play with that "California girl" concept. Anyway, hope you liked it!**


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